And Maybe We'll Get Lucky and We'll Both Grow Old
by singsongsung
Summary: Oneshot. Elvis. Anabelle. "So they lie in a field of sunflowers, and she becomes his and he becomes hers, and they whisper in the sunlight, sharing their secrets."


**A/N: **This movie was effing amazing; there's no other way to put it. The storyline was original and perfect and I never wanted it to end, so I had to write more. Reviews are love.

**And Maybe We'll Get Lucky and We'll Both Grow Old**

She's safely away. She's packed a bag. She's left a note that tells her mother that this is what she _wants_. So they lie in a field of sunflowers, and she becomes his and he becomes hers, and they whisper in the sunlight, sharing their secrets.

--

It takes him three days to admit it. He's making breakfast for her – she's sitting at the kitchen table with her bare feet hooked around the rungs of her chair, watching him as he cooks, a dreamy expression on her face – when he finally gets his courage up and says it.

_I was going to kill myself_.

Her eyes fly over to meet his, light and dark colliding fiercely. _You what? When?_

_I was gonna kill myself. The other day. But then…_

She cuts him off, her eyes sparkling in a way he's never seen before as she gets up, her chair moving at least a foot backward with the force of the impact as she moves away. She stands in front of him, hands on her hips, looking like an imperious beauty queen like the first time since he's been with her, since he's known her. _I told you to call me_.

He smirks at her as he whisks eggs like a child caught disobeying the rules, but with some sort of noble purpose. _I kinda did, didn't I?_

Frowning, she pushes at his chest, causing his back to slam lightly against the counter, and then she shakes her head and wraps her arms around him like she never intends to let go.

--

It takes her a week. Seven perfect days. She takes a bath and walks outside, where she finds him sitting on one of the swings, a cigarette dangling from his lips. She tugs it out of his mouth and curls up at his side while he smoothes her damp hair out of her face and kisses her temple.

_I was gonna do it, too_. She whispers her words and looks at the sky and he's not sure if she's talking to him or to the stars. _Off myself. That same day_.

He looks at her, hard, for a long moment. He's seen her lifeless before, but she is so very alive now that he can't comprehend an end to all of her vivacity. So he relaxes with his arms around her and chooses to tease, instead. _Once wasn't enough for you_?

She laughs into the night air and leans back, placing one of her hands at the back of his neck and pulling him into an upside-down kiss. She tastes like green apples and sugar and the rest of his life.

--

It starts again after they've been living together for just over a fortnight. Or maybe that's just when he's noticed it. He stands outside the bathroom door with his arms crossed, staring down at the floor, listening to the water run as he waits for her to emerge.

She steps out into the hallway, dragging the back of her hand over her mouth, and jumps when she sees him there. She places a hand over her heart and laughs breathily. _Elvis. You scared me!_ She smiles at him winningly and he sees a disturbing difference between this smile, her pageant smile, and the sweet grins she always gives him.

_How long_?

Her smile falters for less than a millisecond. _How long what?_ She reaches for him but he pulls away.

_How long have…have you been doing this to yourself_?

She gives him a pleading look that she realizes almost instantly is useless. _I…_

_How _long_, Anabelle?_

Swallowing hard, she shrugs one of her shoulders, curling into herself. _I guess…a few years_.

He's surprised his eyes don't bug out of his head. He wants to slap her. He wants to hold her. He wants to help her. _You know you're doing it, right? You're killing yourself. Slowly. This is what did it to you the first time_.

_I know_, she whispers, her voice small and tight. _I just don't know how to stop_.

_You should've told me_, he lectures her, and she nods, staring at his feet. He sighs. _Anabelle…_

_I'm sorry_.

His anger, once directed at her, morphs into self-loathing at the way she looks in that moment, so broken. It reminds him of the way her eyes were when she first showed up on his doorstep, desperate for some answers and searching to find the way she really wanted to live. _Don't be…sorry. Just let me help you. Okay? I'll help you_.

Her head bobs up and down oh-so-slightly in what he can only assume is a nod. He steps toward her hesitantly and she melts into his arms, her head tucked into his chest, breathing hard. He rubs her back and rests his chin atop her head. _We'll figure it out, _he says, and she nods against his chest like she really and truly believes him. He sighs, a smile sneaking onto his lips. _Anabelle Leigh, don't you even know how beautiful you are? Don't you know why I kissed you that day? It's not just because of pageants, not just your body, not just…_

She lifts her head and locks eyes with him for a moment, long enough for him to see only bright sky-sea blue, and then she kisses him like she's asking him for some kind of proof. So they sink down to the floor in the hall and she giggles while they unbutton each other's shirts, both of which are his, and he gives her all the reassurance she could ever ask for.

--

Sometimes he misses his father so much he feels like he needs to lash out at the world. She'll let him have his days, watch him in her peripheral vision as he storms around or drives off and throws something in the yard. By evening, when he's calm, when he's sunk into simple sadness rather than the complexities of grief, she's curl up in bed with him, moulding her body to his, and kiss his cheeks or his neck or his fingers and talk to him in her softest voice. He'll tell her stories about his dad, or sometimes his mom, and even though his tone is neutral she touches him like she's trying to absorb his sorrow and listens to him with wide, welcoming eyes. She loved his father, and she finds herself loving his mother through stories as well, and she wants their boy to have the very best possible life, she wants to take care of him.

--

Anabelle has nightmares sometimes. It doesn't come to his attention until about a month after they've been living together, the way she'll wake up soaked in sweat with frantic eyes. He asks her about it and she mumbles things about beauty pageants and remembering dying and several other things which don't make much sense, and then she runs off to get a glass of water or to shower, avoiding his eyes.

Their trips into town are infrequent and covert, since they're a walking scandal, but one day she chooses to drag him there because she wants to plant an entire garden in the back field, and he goes only because he's seen evidence that she can make anything that she chooses grow there.

They buy all the gardening supplies she thinks she needs and decide to treat themselves to ice cream afterward. He admires her out of the corner of his eye while they stand in line together. She's wearing one of his mother's old dresses and a draw hat with a wide brim pulled down to hide her face as much as possible and she looks really amazing but he doesn't know quite how to tell her. She teases him for _checking her out_ and tells him sweetly that she knows what he's thinking, she can see it in his eyes.

She sees something over his shoulder and gets closed off so abruptly that he's taken aback.

_What is it?_

_My…my, um, stepfather._ She flashes him a smile and kisses the corner of his mouth, still looking warily behind him. _I really don't want to see him. I mean, I really don't want him to see me. So, I'm just going to wait in the car, okay?_ With that, she bolts off.

The pieces snap together, slowly but surely, in his mind as he gets a chocolate ice cream cone and heads back to the car. She's sitting all curled up against her door, hands knotted in her lap. He joins her inside, closes his door, and just waits. He looks at her and just waits.

She shakes her head without looking at him, effectively putting his worst fears to rest. She continues to stare out her window, away from him, and sighs. _He's just…_

_A jackass? _he supplies readily.

She turns to look at him and bites back a shy smile. _That's a pretty good word_.

_You don't have to talk about anything you don't want to talk about_. After she nods, he says, _But I'll protect you. I want you to know that_.

Anabelle smiles genuinely, wrinkles around her eyes, dimples in her cheeks. _You'll protect me?_ she laughs, but not unkindly. She leans over to kiss him, and when he cups her cheek he gets melted chocolate ice cream on her skin. He licks it off and she laughs.

She feels happy and safe in unfamiliarly thrilling ways.

--

One day while he's standing outside watching the sun set, she appears at his side and tucks herself into his arms. _What are you thinking_?

He juts his chin out toward the field of sunflowers, glorious golden flowers that seem to go on endlessly. _You spent so much of my money on those. And you saved me with them. _

She smirks slightly and tugs on his arm, turning them around so that they're facing the house. _You ruined my _exquisite _paintjob by writing on your house. And you saved me by doing it. _

Elvis sighs. _We're pretty messed up_, he says, and she just laughs because there was never a moment when they weren't.

--

It's not long after they settle back into their easy pattern of living with one another, more relaxed this time, that she demands to hear what he's writing. She sits crossed-legged on the bed, facing him, eyes gleaming in the low light of the single lamp, expression eager. He warns her, _It's not very good. Nothing I write is very good_. But she just rolls her eyes impatiently.

_Read. You said you would!_

He does, because she is now the person he trusts above all others, and she listens attentively to every single word. When he's done, he sits there, empty-handed, and waits for her reaction.

There's something unreadable in her eyes. _You wrote that?_ she breathes.

He nods, and she crawls across the small space between them to kiss him, laughing lightly as she pins him back to the bed and whispers something that sounds like _amazing_, and they make love on a bed covered with paper that hold the story she somehow inspired him to finish, the sheets slipping off the mattress, floating to the floor.

--

They spend their first few months together just discovering what it's like to truly _live_. They sip coffee and kiss on quiet, pink-tinged mornings. She tries to learn how to cook and he eats whatever she makes no matter how awful it is, and slowly she gets better. Sometimes she'll drag him to the car and they'll just drive until they've found their destination. They play golf in the backyard as a daily ritual, drinking lemonade afterward, and she consistently kicks his ass. They trek out to the beach some days and go skinny-dipping; when they get back home they use the outdoor hose to rinse the sand off their feet and lie together in the grass while the sky gets progressively darker. They get to know each other better; he drives her crazy but she can never stay angry with him, and she's got quirks that he'll never understand but that he comes to find endearing nonetheless. He starts shortening her name, which no one has ever done before. He calls her Ana most of the time, and she quickly learns that he generally only calls her Belle when he's feeling particularly enamoured with her. He discovers that she can say his name in this way that makes him want to kiss her in one hundred places all at once.

Late one evening, once its dark and they're staring at the stars, she says, _I love you_, the first time either of them has voiced those words aloud. He turns toward her and pushes her hair out of her face and says it back. But it doesn't change or solidify or simplify things, because they both knew it all along.

--

Neither of them are sure what to do with their lives. It's out of the question for him to get his embalming license now, given everything that happened with her, and she's never worked a day in her life, and they're both still so young. In the end, they figure it out for one another. She takes his story to a publisher; one day when he comes home she runs toward him and flings her arms around him, wrapping her legs around his waist, and kisses his cheeks and tells him he's going to be an author. He takes all the food she managed to grow in the impossible soil of those back fields into town to sell to the local grocery market. They're not going to have a ton of money, but he's got a lot of savings, and for now it's enough, because it's what they want.

--

_Should we move_? She asks it one afternoon when they're lying in the grass, wrapped up in an old quilt and each other. Neither can pretend they haven't considered it. They want to get away from the gossip and the occasional presence of some member of the press that invades their lives. They're known here, their story's been seen by the whole country, there is no anonymity. But they look at each other, and the sunflowers and the golf course and a house they spruced up together that's still got _I LOVE YOU ANABELLE_ painted on the side, and they just can't.

--

Slowly, she gets accustomed to all the death that has touched his house, and she's determined to fill it with life now. She grows flowers to put in the windows and paints the rooms bright colours and tears down all the curtains so they can have some light.

--

He's not entirely sure what he's thinking the night he proposes to her. They're standing on opposite sides of the kitchen yelling at each other about how to cook broccoli, of all things, and she's so utterly infuriating because she has no sweet clue what she's doing but she refuses to admit it. She's halfway through a self-righteous spiel that he's only half-listening to when he just blurts it out.

_Belle, will you marry me?_

Shocked into speechlessness, she just stares at him, lips parted, eyes wide.

He rubs the back of his neck nervously. _I don't…I didn't exactly plan…what I mean to say is, I want you to marry me, but I don't…I don't have a speech prepared or anything…I don't even have a ring…_ He takes another look at the frozen expression she wears and shakes his head as he sighs. _I'm sorry_.

Anabelle bursts out laughing and when he looks back over at her in surprise she splutters, _Did you just apologize for proposing to me_? She's got tears in her eyes. He shrugs helplessly as he walks over to her, gently wrapping his arms around her waist, and one of her hands runs through his hair while she wraps the other tightly around him and kisses him in way that he can only assume means _yes_.

--

They elope. They have no one but each other because they chose it that way. She wears that dress of his mothers, the white one with the pale blue flowers on it, and he wears one of his many black suits. It's simple. It's almost boring. But it's them and it's forever and that's what matters.

--

Five months after she's officially his wife they get into a fight because he thinks she's making herself throw up again. They're in the kitchen, because that's become their usual place for arguments, and she gets so angry with him that she throws the lid of a pot at his head, and then she starts to cry. After ducking out of the way, he stands there, stunned, and demands, _What the hell is that matter with you_?

She faces him, hands braced against the counter behind her, and gnaws on her lower lip. She shrugs at him, still with tears in her eyes. _I'm pregnant_.

It's very possibly the last thing he ever would have expected her to say. He opens his mouth but he can't say anything; he just blinks at her, stunned.

She nods slowly and pushes away from the counter, turning her back on him. _I'm just gonna get back to this. Because you clearly have nothing to say_.

He sighs her full name, _Anabelle…_

_No, fine, just go. _She presses a hand over her mouth and squeezes her eye shut. She'll cry more once he leaves.

Elvis crosses the kitchen to stand just behind her. She bats his hand away when he rests it lightly on her waist and he pulls back surrendering. He leans in to press his lips to her cheek just below her ear, trail his lips downward in a series of kisses. _I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I… _He thinks back to that day she locked him out of the car and says, _I was an ass_.

She laughs a watery laugh and bends her head toward his and he knows that she remembers, too, and he's making progress.

_C'mere_, he says gently, pushing dishes aside and helping her hop up to sit on the counter. He stands in between her legs and rests his hands on either side of her body while she regards him seriously. He takes a deep breath. _You and me. Parents_.

Her lips twist into a frown. _You think it's crazy_.

_No. No, I don't think it's crazy. _

She wraps her legs around him loosely, heels resting at the backs of his knees. _It scares me. I don't even know how to take care of myself half the time_.

_We'll figure it out. We've always been able to figure it out_.

_Do we even have _money?_ I mean, we can't…_

_We can do it, _he repeats, cutting her off. _I love you. Isn't that what matters?_

Anabelle nods, cupping his cheek in her hand, her fingers tracing patterns lightly against his skin. She kisses him softly and then hugs him, leaning into him, her head tucked against his neck.

_I love you, too. _

He watches her sleep that night, hair splayed across her pillow like a halo, legs tangled in the sheets, one hand resting on her flat stomach. He thinks about how his dad wanted grandbabies running around, making a mess, and he feels a sense of fulfillment.

--

He annoys the hell out of her for the majority of the next eight months. He drags her an hour away so that she can see the best doctor he knows of. When she pouts in the car he tells her irritably that he wanted to make sure that everything's safe, since, after all, she was previously bulimic and previously _dead_. She scowls at him like he's said something that wasn't true and barely speaks to him for the duration of the trip.

Even though she always says that he's the one making things difficult, she's really being much harder on him. Some days are so good that they border on perfection, she's like one big ray of sunshine with her blonde hair and glowing skin and her sweet smiles. Other days she yells or cries or blames him things which are not his fault, not at all. No matter what kind of day it's been, he'll crawl into bed next to her at the end of the day, kiss her forehead and tummy and lips, and apologize even if he's completely blameless before he reads her something he's written or something he likes until she falls asleep.

One night as he's reading and her fingers are lingering over his skin, just touching him, he catches a contemplative expression on her face. He closes the book and waits for her to explain.

_I was just thinking…we should name the baby after your dad. Whether it's a boy or a girl. Like, Charles or Charlotte. What do you think?_

He can't find the words to tell her what he thinks, so he lets his love and gratitude seep into his kiss instead, and he doesn't say a word when she yells at him ever again after that.

--

She's sure it's a girl. She _insists_ that she _knows_, so he paints sunflowers on the pale green wall of their baby's room.

--

She feels like she could define _alive_ as the way she feels when she holds their daughter for the first time, and he thinks he could define it just as easily as the feeling of watching her hold their daughter for the first time. She looks beautiful with wisps of hair sticking to her still-sweaty cheeks and the best smile he's ever seen on her lips and the happiest tears she's ever cried in her eyes.

_She's perfect_, Anabelle whispers.

He smiles at her, at them both. _She's a miracle_.

She kisses him hard, until she's breathless, because he finally believes.

He hates the hospital, the potential of being in the public eye, and he hates seeing her lying in bed surrounded by medical equipment because it reminds him of seeing her dead. But he's alive and she's alive and they made a life. He kisses Anabelle's forehead while she sleeps and he holds their little girl. For all the losses in his life, he has finally made gains that compensate. He wants to get his girls out of the hospital, out of the city, and back to their sanctuary.

--

They name their daughter Ambrosia, derived from the name Ambrose, which means _immortal_.

Ambrosia Charlotte Leigh Moreau. But most of the time they call her Am.

Anabelle develops the habit of calling him _honey_ and their daughter _baby_ in that southern-belle voice of hers, which is incredibly endearing and a little bit sexy. Elvis eventually begins calling Ambrosia _chickadee_ as a pet name, and it makes Anabelle fall in love with him over again.

--

He realizes when Ambrosia is two years old and a bundle of stubborn energy that Anabelle has issues with the word _no_. She's such an amazing mother that he's in awe of her, but he finds himself playing disciplinarian most of the time and he doesn't understand it.

When he brings it up with her after Am passes out, exhausted from one of her tantrums, she sets her jaw and shakes her head. _I just…_

_You're her mother. You're allowed to tell her what to do_. _You need to_.

She shoots him a pained look. _I never want to _make_ her do anything_, she whispers.

He sighs and wraps her up in a hug and kisses her hair and promises her that she will never do to their daughter what her own mother did to her. Ambrosia will be happy and make her own decisions and know nothing but love and life. He says promises her until she believes him.

--

Am fulfills them. They're young, they're not exactly wealthy, and they're isolated from the world in some ways, but none of it matters. It's what they want. It's how they belong. It's how they _live_.

--

They're drinking lemonade and watching the sunset and kissing on the swing in their lawn when they hear the telltale rhythm, the beat of their four-year-old's feet as she runs.

Her shiny black girls are a mess and her blue eyes are twinkling as she hands her mother a bouquet of sunflowers that she's plucked and crawls onto her father's lap, clutching a sheet of paper.

_Thank you, baby_, Anabelle says, pressing a kiss to the crown of her beloved little girl's head.

_What've you got there, chickadee?_ Elvis inquires, touching the piece of paper as his daughter snuggles close to him.

_My story_, she announces, hesitant but proud. _Wanna hear it?_

_Of course_, her mother says enthusiastically.

Am reads her short story, with its simple plotline and straightforward vocabulary, to them with a shy sort of confidence. It ends _happily ever after_ and Anabelle smiles when she sees her husband's smirk. They both know that life isn't that easy, that fairytales don't just fall into place, but they feel blessed to have raised a daughter who does.

Ambrosia falls asleep on Elvis' lap, her hand loosely grasping her mother's. Anabelle leans over, resting her head against her husband's shoulder, and tilts her head up momentarily to kiss his cheek.

_I think you showed me this_, she says, her voice a lazy whisper. _That day you kissed me…I woke up because this was what you showed me I could have, and I didn't want to miss it._

_You think that, do you? _Elvis asks her huskily.

His scepticism makes her giggle as she nods, closing her eyes against the light of the setting sun, and he smiles, kissing her temple, his lips lingering against her skin.

_Me, too_, he says softly.


End file.
